


Pets Are The Best Medicine

by allin_ev_itable



Category: Bandstand - Oberacker/Oberacker & Taylor
Genre: Just some cute domestic gay shit, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Misadventures of McMad & McDad, This would've been longer but I had Technical Difficulties, dog parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:50:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15374091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allin_ev_itable/pseuds/allin_ev_itable
Summary: Nick wants a dog. Wayne, of course, doesn't. Nick, of course, doesn't listen.





	Pets Are The Best Medicine

  Wayne was on his third cup of coffee during a normal Tuesday morning when Nick first brought it up.

  “How do you feel about dogs?”

  The shock that followed was mostly caused by how immediate the conversation started, especially since the only communication they’d had that morning was a groggy “good morning” from Nick when the other had sat up in bed at exactly 8:30am, as per usual. Other than that, it had been the same wordless routine of Wayne making coffee in his desperate need for caffeine as Nick made them both breakfast and pulled pills from the medicine cabinet for morning doses. The two didn’t usually start talking to each other until Wayne had finally gone through his fourth or sometimes fifth cup of coffee and Nick was positive the other would listen to what he had to say without being too tired to stay fully awake.

  “...Dogs? As in, four-legged, furry, flea-infested creatures?” Wayne asked, setting his cup down to send the other man a curious yet wary look. 

  Nick shook his head and handed him his bottle of pain meds, catching the slight wince Wayne tried to hide that signalled his side was hurting. “No, I mean four-legged, adorable creatures who just want to love you and be your friend. They don’t call ‘em “Man’s Best Friend” for nothing.”

  “I wonder if they can change that saying to the trombone. The trombone makes sense. It won’t piss on the furniture or eat my shoes.”

  “Come on, I’m serious.” 

  Wayne took a sip of his coffee to get the medication down his throat, and as he glanced at Nick he knew he was trying to have a serious discussion. “Nick, I’m too tired to have a conversation like this right now.” He wasn’t quite sure what had brought this on. Nick had never hinted at wanting a dog before. Up until that moment, Wayne had always assumed he shared a similar distaste for pets. Perhaps that was another point added to the long list of reasons why his wife kicked him out, because the kids’ constant pleading to get a dog was no match for Wayne’s constant rejecting of the idea. “Why do you want to know how I feel about dogs?”

  “Because I want a dog; isn’t that obvious?” Nick sighed and shook his head at the way he’d snapped, automatically feeling guilty about it as he mumbled an apology. He was still trying to keep his anger at bay with Wayne. He was never too harsh with him, but he still had his moments. Who wouldn’t after the things he'd gone through? “I just think it’d be nice to have a pet, y’know?”

  “Why don’t we get a goldfish then? Julia’s mother has a fish. She gets all the joy without the chaos.”

  “Fish are nice for non-dog people, but I’m a dog person.”

  “Johnny acts like a puppy sometimes.”

  “It’d be really fuckin’ weird to keep him on a leash, Wayne.”

  “You can keep me on a leash.”

  “Stop being a dick.”

  Wayne stood up when his coffee cup became empty much to his dismay and began to gather their breakfast dishes to clean them. “I don’t want a dog. They’re messy and smelly and totally unpredictable.”

  “You had two kid-” Nick started, only to cut himself off when Wayne sent him a look that told him to quit while he was ahead. “Okay, fine. I’ll drop it.”

***~***

  Three weeks later, and Nick wasn’t dropping it.

  He dropped the _conversation_ of a dog, sure, but he didn’t drop his specific longing to have one. So, one bright afternoon as he was driving along the streets of Cleveland and passing the time until Wayne would return home from his day with the kids, he caught sight of a pet store and immediately pulled into the parking lot.  _ I’ll just go in to look around, _ he thought.  _ I won’t make any irrational decisi- _

  He left with a red golden retriever puppy, and every item necessary to take care of it. 

  It wasn’t until after he returned home that he began to worry about what Wayne would say. He eventually came to a conclusion that he would see the adorable puffball and just forget to be mad.

  _Christ, was he wrong._

  Nick was in the kitchen working on something to make for dinner when he heard the door open and Wayne semi-sarcastically yell, “Honey, I’m home!”, followed by an immediate pause in footsteps and the puppy barking. “Nick!”

  He followed the sound of the man’s voice into the living room, where his eyes were trained on the fluffy mess laying calmly on the couch. Wayne looked surprisingly calm, though in his eyes Nick could tell that any second he could create the newest hell dimension if he wasn’t careful with his words. 

  “What. Is. That?” Wayne asked him, pointing to the dog.

  “It’s a dog, Wayne. What the hell else would it be if it barked?” 

  The trombone player didn’t yell. He didn’t fight. He simply hung up his hat and jacket and power marched to the bedroom. The biggest way that Nick could tell Wayne was angry or upset was when he gave him the silent treatment, which he absolutely despised but he knew most of the time it was because he was being an asshole and he deserved it.

  Nick sighed and followed the other to the bedroom, glad Wayne hadn’t locked the door as he stepped in. “Wayne, c’mon don’t be like this-”

  “Like what? Upset because you did the  _ one  _ thing I specifically said no to? Please, Nick, refresh my memory on why I _ shouldn’t  _ be upset!” Wayne snapped, beginning to pace as he thought about all the ways he needed to clean the couch to get the smell of dog out of it. “Why the hell are you so damn adamant on having a damn dog?!”

  “Because I heard from a friend that after he got a dog he wasn’t so damn stressed out! He could actually fucking sleep at night and was a better person for the people he loved, so excuse the hell out of me for trying to help the both of us!”

  Wayne froze as he listened to Nick speak, and for the first time everything started to make sense.

_   Nick’s nightmares were getting worse. _

  Wayne started to understand why Nick had been acting the way he had as of late. Snapping more often than not, waking up at odd hours of the night only to tell Wayne in the morning that he slept well, the desperate talk of getting a dog that Wayne had rejected so quickly. He felt like an idiot for turning it down before. Nick was trying to get better, to fix things for both of them, and Wayne wasn’t having it.

  He was going to ask why Nick hadn’t told him before, but the answer was already clear. While he had been trying to get better at trusting people, especially Wayne, he still had trouble with trust when it came to the things that made him vulnerable, weak.

  “...You can keep it, but it’s not my dog. Don’t expect me to get attached to it.”

***~***

  It turns out owning a dog was pretty easy.

  Well, the puppy days were hell, and Nick was pretty sure Wayne was ready to take her back to the pet store at any given second, but he never did. About a month and a half into owning the dog, who Nick had named Addy for reasons unknown other than the fact that she “just looked like an Addy”, Wayne had started to grow fond of her. The one thing he swore he wouldn’t do.

  It started out small, with her running to him at the exact time every single day that he would feed her and take her on walks since he could never trust Nick to stick to a consistent schedule. As she spent more time at the Radel-Wright household, she began to test the limits of physical contact with Wayne. 

  During puppy days, the man had immediately lost the fight about keeping her from sleeping in their bed. But he and Nick had come to a compromise of placing a dog bed at the foot of the bed so she wasn’t breathing down Wayne’s neck in the middle of the night and could comfort Nick if he was in the midst of a nightmare and his shaking or mumbling turned too violent. 

  But now, as she was nearly twice the size she had been when Nick brought her home, Addy would lay on the couch while Wayne was reading the paper or going over sheet music and lay her head in his lap. At first, he brushed her off and gently moved her off the couch, pulling a disgusted face as he looked over the fur-covered couch. The vacuum was used at least  _ twice _ a day since she had arrived.

  Then one night, as the three of them were asleep in bed, Wayne had his first nightmare that did more than just startle him awake. It was one so horrifying and violent he had begun screaming and spasming in his sleep, unable to wake up and return to a calmed reality.

  “Wayne. Wayne, c’mon wake up. You’re okay, you’re okay. Listen to me, you’re having a nightmare. You’re not back there, you’re at home. You’re safe.” Nick tried to gently wake the other up, so afraid from the sudden screams to take cover that he had woken up in a matter of seconds. “Come on, Wayne. I’m right here, come back.” He watched as Addy slowly walked up to the other end of the bed, plopping down right next to Wayne and nuzzling her face in his neck. He woke up in a sweat, shaking and crying and looking around the room feeling far too disoriented for his own comfort. When he spotted Nick’s relieved face he started to calm down a little, even more so when he felt something warm and fluffy nuzzled up close to him. 

  Nick knew he wouldn’t want to talk about it. They never talked about things like that. What he did know, however, was that the most ideal way for the two of them to go back to sleep would be to move close and wrap his arms around the man, glad that Addy had chosen to lay down on the opposite side of Wayne so he wouldn’t have to move her. He held the other close and mumbled a few more reassurances that he was there and they were okay before the three of them all stilled once more.

From that night on, Addy was no longer “Just Nick’s Dog”, and Julia’s mother went the extra mile on her first birthday to make a tag for her collar labelled “Addy Radel-Wright”. Wayne, for what seemed like the very first time, was one hundred percent okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> STALK ME CORNER
> 
> Instagram: @allin_ev_itable  
> Tumblr: @allin-ev-itable  
> Twitter: @allin_ev_itable


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